Painting My Halls

nancyinmichOctober 8, 2011

As those who have been following my thread on my Library/Music Room know, DH has put a moratorium on new projects. After two straight summers of construction (one by choice, one by necessity) he just cannot stand the thought of more work around the house. So I figured that nights when he is out being a musician are my best bets for getting the painting done.

Tomorrow is a gig night. In addition, Jim, my contractor, has the baseboard moldings ready to install on Monday. NOW is the time to paint! the obvious thing to do is to just carry the vanilla-colored Spice Delight

into the halls. But I LOVE a color I found at Lowes. I bought a gallon of it when I was just planning to paint in the kithen and Family room, before I bought the Green Demolition kitchen and did the whole remodel. It is called Pale Orchid.

I could use Lush Meadow on the lower part of the wall.

Any thoughts, anyone? If you like the two colors, what would you use as a delineator between the colors? Any ideas?I am thinking to do the top half the wall in Pale Orchid, the rest in the green.

Can I do the one wall that runs from the front foyer into the bedroom area with the top half in Pale Orchid and the bottom of the wall in a green? Can I then leave the rest of the walls the Spice Delight?

I know what you mean about project nights. I have project weekends when dh goes hunting. lol

Are the two halls separated by any kind of trim, like around door openings? Or would you have to paint up to an outer corner with the Spice Delight, and begin on the other side with the green and purple?

If you have a separation of some kind and the 2nd hall isn't a continuation of the 1st, I think it would look great.

OH Loretta so happy you posted your room picture again. I could not find the straight on version. STILL totally loving your room. So elegant.

WOW Nancy that is a lot of hall to paint in an evening. LOL Hope hubby does not notice the first night he is gone.

We have one long 18 foot hall. And if I had had them put the front door on the other side of the house would be the same as you door hall bedroom. I sit here and look the whole length of our house. But here it keeps it feeling a bit more open.

Considering changes but just found out company coming tonight or tomorrow to stay so need to deal with that. Have fun ladies I will be back as soon as I can.

I guess I was planning to credit Loretta in the Original Post and forgot. That is what I get for not waiting until morning to do my post! I apologize, Loretta. You ARE my inspiration and I meant to give you credit.

The wall I am wanting to paint "a' la Loretta" is the one with the Carmel Foret print. It is the wall that you see as you look out of the kitchen toward the front hall. The wall starts just past the French Doors in the foyer. There is a white painted fluted molding around the french door, then I would start the green and orchid wall. It continues to where the wall ends, across from the linen closet, just around the corner from the third bedroom door. The short wall across from it as you enter the hall from the foyer, and all the other walls, would be painted with Spice Delight. What do you all think?

Nancy I think it would look great as an accent wall with the other walls the spice delight. Love those colors.

I am going to deal with my hall too and hope soon. I am going to do each side different. The light green on top with white wainscot on the one side and all green on the other side no wainscot. Crazy I know but there is a reason too long to go into now. Linnk to hall way picture and not to hijack yours. When I get ready to do the project I will start my own thread. But since we are talking hallways. Well............... I will not be using the wainscot on the wall with the desk. Maybe you all can see why. OK I am out of here.

I think I can see why. It continues into the next room, so where would you end it? Also, it is a more broken-up wall with three doorways and the desk, so it will not have the same wainscotting effect as the left side of the hall. And no, you are not hijacking!

Loretta and Chris and I all seem to be liking green these days. I know Chris has always used a lot of green. My kitchen and family room are green now, but a lighter one than the Lush Meadows, above. My bedroom in my old home was a light green with border at the ceiling that looked like an elaborate crown molding. Green is also a major color inthe new Library.Music Room. The rug has green and gold and taupe and the loveseat color is going to be green, but a dark green.

Nancy, I've been meaning to tell you this. When I went to the doctor and talked about shingles, he said I can still get the shingles vaccine, but have to be clear of shingles for a year first. Makes sense, the virus has been there since chicken pox and getting shingles didn't mutate it.

Marti,
My Infectious Disease doc in the hospital told me to get the vaccine in six months. I think that he is extra concerned because I have a chronically low white count. My resistance for viruses (but not for bacteria) is chronically down around where an untreated AIDS patient's would be. I have been tested for bone marrow problems, and that is fine, so I was told that the low white count was essentially meaningless for me. But this new ID doc said that it is specifically the virus and fungus fighting white cells that I am missing. So that explains why I am getting shingles at age 52, and why I get thrush occasionally. Apparently, he has read journal articles that were not available back when I got that bone marrow test. It is good to finally know why I get thrush. I gave up asthma drugs and sinus drugs with steroids in them. I am sick of docs saying that I must have uncontrolled diabetes or HIV because I show up in a walk-in clinic on the occasional weekend to get some nystatin. Well, now I know why!

Nancy, posting now before I forget it.
To put something on the demarcation between two paint colors, I bought a roll of 1/2 inch auto body pin striping tape. It is a LOT of tape, but about $12 when I got it.

I got GOLD. Not bright gold, but sort of satiny gold. You put it up there and then you burnish it to make it adhere nicely to a less than smooth surface.

Or you could just put some chair rail there, paint it the vanilla color. However, I liked the pin striping on the wall I did in a sun porch where it was the same kind of green below, and a sort of cafe au lait above.

And I'm thinking the green is fine. But the orchid is going to be a potent color at full strength. I would have it cut by half with white, but do it with a sample jar first. Of course, that is the paint adjacent to the crown molding, and needs to be done before Jim installs the molding.

If the orchid is too strong for the room (it happened to me...be sure your green and your orchid are both warm tones or both cool tones so they will live nicely together)

If it gets painted and you need to tone it down, just do a matte coat of clear over the orchid, and then rag roll the vanilla over it....

Ever since childhood, the lavender and green has been a favorite color combination. Seeing the orchid sort of throws a new twist on it, because it is on the cooler side of the spectrum. I'm more into the earthy tones or warmer stuff.
Have you put the two on the wall yet?

I think in your hallway coming out of the kitchen, you might consider painting out the double doors there that appear so dark. They are flat doors, so you might even get away with putting a flat chair rail across them too. Just plan the heights to avoid any conflict with the door knobs or the light switches.

This will give the eye a clean sweep all the way to the end of the hall. And, on the wall at the far end, make the art hanging on the wall VERTICAL and not HORIZONTAL. To be in the same scale geometrically speaking as the "frame" it has with the end of the hall walls, the enclosure of the ceiling. A long mirror with a white frame might look good unless you have the chair rail going there also. If not, and if that is the wall you want to be the Spice color, I'd sure put something long and narrow there.....or maybe a group of three hung one above the other. That is the way I take wide-screen pictures and turn them into a longer look.

Perfect, ML. I was thinking of gold because the Foret print has a gold frame on it. I have gold paint in a lot of different tones, so I was thinking of getting a small molding (not necessarily a chair rail molding) and using my golds on it. I don't have enough to do a big rail, and don't want to spend too much on more.

The orchid is really pale, like the name says. I love your idea about toning it down if needed, too. The molding that I expect Jim to install is the baseboard molding, so getting the Spice Delight on all the other walls is probably the way that I can best prepare for the installation of the baseboards. I think that only Keith is here so far today, painting in the library. Jim may be coming later, or may still be "up north" today. I know he went up to a reunion with old friends. His in-laws have a vacation home and he may have stopped there to get some work done. If he is going to be gone today, I have to get going and get those halls painted. Off I go, to see what the plan is.....

Responding to your second post, ML:
All of our door frames and doors are the dark wood. Some are broken, most are scratched. They do match nicely with the new linoleum, carrying the warm wood tones up from the rust and taupe of the linoleum, onto the walls. The vanilla-colored Spice Delight is also reflected in the linoleum.

If I start painting over the dark wood doors and frames, I have to be committed to doing them all. I have to think about that some. On one hand, I would like to replace the flimsy, cheap door moldings, since two are chipped where the moldings extended past the wall to hide the closet bi-fold door edges. On the other hand, I have five more days off of work because my employer refused to allow me to return part time. I will be moving everything back into the library most of that time, but maybe I could squeeze some hall painting in. I can't also squeeze in removal and sanding of doors to paint them, and the removal and replacement of door moldings. Remember the term "mission creep?" Na-unh, not going to do that at this point! So I like your ideas for the long run, but I can't do them at this point. Paint on walls, maybe.

What is missing from the end of the hall in my photos is the curio cabinet that sits there. It is a small thing, about 42 inches high, 10 inches deep, and a foot wide. It sits under the Carmel Foret print and provides the vertical influence on that wall. The green thing above the Carmel Foret is a "Peace on Earth" sign for Christmas that one of DF-in-law's caregivers put up there. I tend to leave it out year-round. There is a nail in the wall above the Foret from where I sometimes hang a big wreath, and the caregiver put the sign up there on a whim. Since I have never "decorated" before, I just left it there.

The wall with the Foret print of Pansies is the wall I hope to do in green and pale orchid. I was going to do all the other walls in Spice Delight. What do you think of that, ML? I am afraid that doing all of the halls that way would look too chopped up. I like the Pale Orchid with the colors of the Foret print.

Going by your words, not the paint samples, which really look different that I'd expect from the NAMES, I'd say that YES
the ORCHID and the original Valspar green painted over/under on the Pansy Foret wall would be fine.

There is more than one kind of balancing act going on here, and symmetrical is not required, since you hall is definitely not symmetrical. If you had doors opposite each other on the walls, then maybe symmetry in the paint job would be expected by the eye. But since the hall has an assymetrical feel to it, you can balance that feeling by putting the two colors on the wall opposite the single paint color. It will in fact make the eye feel happier with the space, even if it is not a conscious reaction.

So I say GO FOR IT. It is only paint, and it can be painted over if you don't like it.

A comment not about paint, but about the function of hallways in general.

Nancy, you have quite a few hallways. The space is mostly just a path from one living space to another. BUT, it is space that can serve a purpose and make the hall have a real impact on the feel of size in your home. By making folks walking along the halls be distracted from their simple passage from one room to another, USE THE HALLS AS YOUR GALLERY. I would tend to have similar frames hung at the same height as the frame tops along the wall with no molding. And the wall with the molding (wainscoting height) have the pictures/frames hung same height at the bottoms. To emphasize the line of the wainscoting of course. I do not have but a simple turnaround for a hall in Mobile, just about no walls w/o door frames, so I cannot in that house create a "gallery" on the walls of the hallway. But I did it in the Cape in Mass, and in my original MoccasinLanding, AND, I painted the ceiling a sky blue with puffy white/gray clouds on it. It felt good going down that hall too.

If you have a room which serves as a passage way, maybe along one side, to get to another space, that is where you can create a line of framed art, to sort of move things along. I'm putting in one picture here to show what I mean. In this small parlor, there is a path from the front door in an "L" to reach the dining room and the rest of the downstairs spaces. The "art" inside the 50% off frames (when Sears bought KMart) is just plain paper copies of pictures I took at Mystic Seaport several years ago. As a sailor, it appeals to my mind. In your case, some frames along the hallway leading up to your DH's music room would also be a prelude to music........

Very good points, ML. I like your use of pictures leading people inside. I have a zillion pictures from the 1920s and 30s of family members I never met and my known great aunts and uncles, plus early pictures of my mother and father's families. I had them up in my first house, in New Jersey. I have one we call "Grandma Teddy Roosevelt" because my great grandmother did quite resemble him! Anyway, I have thought of using those photos opposite those closet doors that you wanted me to paint, ML. My question is whether that hall is too narrow for pictures on the walls.

As for the hall leading from the front door, That is where the pansies are. I could consider adding other prints there. I have two fake Monets across the hall from the Foret, before the intersection that leads to the kitchen. After that, there are few spaces for things until you get to the space outside our bedroom door. I have those two barn drawings there under the shelf I need to remove. Now THAT space could use something else!

(The following paragraph will look familiar to readers of my library thread.)
I stopped by Jo-Ann Fabrics today. Well, I am IN LOVE with a silky green and orchid striped fabric that would look so sweet on this little chair I bought on Craigslist for $20. If I use the Olive 2 on the inside of the front door and as the bottom half of the hall leading away from the front door, then paint the top half the Pale Orchid (which I do not have a gallon of, I have Pale Crocus!), this chair will carry the color from the foyer into the hall. I do love the Light Orchid. I don't know what I will do with the Pale Crocus! I COULD use it in our bedroom. I have a 9x13 wool rug in grayish blue with all kinds of pastel floral colors in it. The Pale Crocus could go well with it. But of course, I am not allowed to pull down wallpaper and paint and put in wood floors in there for 3 YEARS!

I used to have pictures (family & others) on the walls of my long hall. Took them off to paint (same color) and noticed how much wider the hall seemed without the pictures.

I put the pictures as a collage at the end of the hall instead. Now, when walking down the hall, the focus is on pictures instead of dead space and the walls don't seem to crowd as we walk down the hall.

I think your chair in that striped fabric would look terrific and tie in all your colors too, no matter where you used it.

Since I don't have a long hall, I cannot feel how cramped it might be to have pictures hanging along the space. But I do see all the time how halls are used as galleries for masses of photos.

Where you have those dark pairs of doors, the wall opposite could be where you can hang photos to balance the space. I would not put up any frames except the flat narrow gallery style. Black 1/2 inch or maybe espresso. The height has a lot to do with it. Keep them low no more than eye level.
Put shiny glass not flat glass, because it will help bounce light down the room. I would also consider adding a nice hall light, maybe a track light on a dimmer, because part of the problem with a hallway is it is mostly DARK.

I'm not giving up on making the hall a great space for displaying your photos. Keep the grouping of photos in a real LINE, mostly the same size and the same frame type, so it serves to LEAD THE EYE, not stop the eye. It is all psychological.

Gotta go to Staples to buy a mouse. Mine just died on me. And I am severely handicapped without it. I keep reaching for it.....oh yeah, in your other thread, Nancy, I uploaded a picture that should have gone in this thread. About painting the doors two colors.